News Roundup for 10/14/11
George Soros (Reuters file photo)
-Headline of the Day-
“Reuters’s Dizzying Changes to Its Soros-Occupy Wall Street Story.”
Yesterday, Reuters posted a story about how it looked like shadowy gazillionare and source of all evil George Soros was behind all of this Occupy Wall Street business. Their evidence? Soros once gave money to a group that gave money to a group involved with OWS — so that sounds super-solid already, right?
And it turns out that Soros gave money to the group that gave money back in 2009 and 2007 — long before OWS was anybody’s idea for anything. At this point, the reporting hinges on “if you squint real hard and drink a lot of vodka and ignore the fact that time exists, it kind of looks like maybe its possible that George Soros had maybe something to do with all this. Maybe.”
So not everyone was sold on this and people started pointing out that this was really shitty reporting. At this point, Reuters changed the story to “Soros: not a funder of Wall Street protests.” No, really. Apparently good reporting now involves the process of elimination. Look for the big, widely distributed story that Lexx Luthor isn’t behind this thing either.
But the fixed story is not the only version that Reuters is distributing — they also feature the unfixed story, in case that’s what you like better.
So, if you live in the real world, then you can learn that George Soros has been ruled out as the mastermind behind the 99-percenters. If you’re a Tea Party nutjob who blames George Soros every time it rains, then the uncorrected version is the one for you.
And through it all, the story has been updated and rewritten to death, when the most obvious solution would be a retraction. “Reuters cannot — must not — get a reputation as a right-wing media outlet,” writes Reuters’ own blogger Felix Salmon. “We have to report the news as impartially as we can. In this case, there was no story, and nothing to report. Inventing a tenuous and intellectually-dishonest link between Soros and OWS might get us traffic from Matt Drudge — but that’s traffic which, frankly, we don’t particularly value or care for.”
If that’s the case, maybe leaving an uncorrected version of the story up for wingnut blogs to link to isn’t the wisest decision ever. (Atlantic Wire)
-Wall Street reconsiders this “too big to fail” stuff-
Click to embiggen
Why do citizens have a monopoly on the citizenry? (DailyKos)
-Bonus HotD-
“Moody’s Economist Says GOP Jobs Bill Would ‘Likely Push The Economy Back Into Recession.’”
Which is weird, because that’s exactly what it did when it was called “Bush’s economic plan.” (ThinkProgress)
News Roundup for 10/10/11
Getting someplace
-Headline of the Day-
“Poll: Half the country has heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests.”
CNN is out with a good news/bad news poll. The good news is “roughly half” (51%) of the people CNN polled were aware of the Occupy Wall Street protests and the bad news is that, of them, 54% don’t have an opinion about them either way. But the bad news breaks down further as good bad news for the 99-percenters and bad bad news for the people backing the suits. CNN reports that “27% say they agree with the movement’s overall position on the financial system and social change, with 19% saying disagree with Occupy Wall Street on those issues.”
In better news for the 99-percenters, Occupy Wall Street is winning the internet by an extremely wide margin. “Those who use social media were more likely to support the goals of the movement, with a full third of those respondents saying they agreed with the group’s overall position,” reports The Hill. “Only 14 percent of social media users said they did not support the protesters.”
It’s a start. Occupy Facebook! (CNN)
-GOP consistency on display-
>
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No comment needed, I guess. (DailyKos)
-Bonus HotD-
“Almost Twice As Many People Have Heard of Occupy Wall Street As Rick Perry.”
Or, “Fun With Mix-and-Match Polling.” (Wonkette)
Wisconsin Recall Update
We have a few hard numbers now on the Wisconsin recall races and, while the news is good, it’s not anything we didn’t already know. Jmartin4s at DailyKos got hold of some polling from Insider Michigan Politics which finds that Democrats are clear leaders in three races that they’re widely expected to win. What’s telling here is just how large those leads are:
State Senate District 12-Incumbent Jim Holperin (D)
46.3% Simac (R) 53.7% Holperin (D)
State Senate District 18-Incumbent Randy Hopper (R)
45.3% Hopper (R) 54.7% King (D)
State Senate District 32-Incumbent Dan Kapanke (R)
43.0% Kapanke (R) 57.0% Shilling (D)
Two strong wins and one landslide. One Republican incumbent who was expected to win finds herself in a much tighter race than anyone had expected. Republican state Sen. Alberta Darling recently told constituents she couldn’t guarantee she’d be reelected. Asked at a Q & A if she was sure she’d win, Darling answered, “I’m not sure. It’s going to be about turnout.”
According to Andrew Kroll at Mother Jones, she’s gone from a candidate who was “a lock to win her recall mere months ago” to a very slim lead and, in one poll at least, a statistical tie.
…According to polling data, Darling has some cause to worry: One poll released in mid-July by the Democratic Party showed Pasch ahead of Darling by 1 percentage point, while a Public Policy Polling survey commissioned by the liberal Daily Kos put Darling up by 5 points. Even then, it’s a sign of the shifting political headwinds in Wisconsin that the Republican state senator considered by Democrats to be the least likely to lose her recall election is now conceding that she may be unseated.
And she’s right. The “it’s all about turnout” cliche always struck me as a little obvious — if no one shows up to vote for you then, yeah, you’re not going to win. That’s how this election stuff works. But it’s shorthand for “we need ‘get out the vote’ efforts.” And it’s there that the right is getting a little antsy. The rightwing Human Events spells out the worry behind that antsiness.
Privately, more than a few Republican consultants are growing nervous and sensing that organized labor’s years-longer skills at turning out voters in special elections will win the day for them. The nature of the districts targeted by Democrats is also working to their advantage because, as [GOP consultant] Scott Becher told Human Events, “Democrats cherry-picked the districts they were going after.” In the Oshkosh district, for example, Republican Sen. Randy Hopper was last elected by a slim 189 votes over Democrat Jessica King and now faces a rematch with Oshkosh Deputy Mayor Kane. There are two prisons and a university in the district. In the 2nd District (Green Bay), Republican Sen. Rob Cowles faces a well-known opponent in former Brown County Executive Nancy Nussbaum, who is taking a page from national Democrats and denouncing Republican policy, in which (she charges), “I see the wealthiest people are being benefited. It just is not fair.”
The part about “cherry-picking” is BS, of course. Recall petitions were circulated in every district where a senator was eligible — in the farthest right (and left, for that matter) districts, those petitions failed to get the required number of signatures. Given the nature of the process, it only stands to reason that the more competitive the district, the more likely the success of the petition. You’ll notice that my own senator, Democrat Fred Risser, isn’t being recalled. It’s not for lack of trying, but for lack of signatures. And even if they’d found enough signatures to get the ball rolling, Risser is beloved here — the challenger would be slaughtered. The GOP didn’t “cherry-pick” other dems and leave Risser alone. There was just no chance of anything ever getting off the ground here.
But here again we have the turnout worry. Specifically, that labor has the advantage. People are banging phones and knocking on doors and sitting in the back rooms of labor halls stuffing envelopes — all volunteers and all working for free. Republicans, with their complete certainty that the private sector can do no wrong, have limited themselves mostly to hiring firms to make robo-calls and send mailers. Any volunteers come from the Tea Party which, let’s face it, is looking a lot like a flash in the pan at the moment. They can’t turn out the free workers that unions can.
None of this is to say that Democrats will ultimately be successful in turning over control of the state senate. They need a net gain of three seats. Those three winners at the top of the post include an incumbent. But right now, from everything I’m seeing, it’s pretty much a 50/50.
It just depends on who wants it more.
-Wisco
